Various systems have been developed to simplify musical notation in attempts to assist students to translate the notation into musical performance. U.S. Pat. No. 391,887 issued to Fallon incorporates consonants to identify sounds of the notes, dots, and rests, while the vowels designate the life of the consonants, that is, the duration of or value of the sound or note. The 12 chromatic sounds of an octave are represented by the 12 consonants B, D, F, G, Y, L, Ch, N, V, R, S, and T, in the order given. Application of the different alphabetical characters in writing a piece of music is as follows: the respective characters designating the tones of the music and the duration are written on a real or imaginary straight horizontal line from left to right. Consonants or notes receive their duration by writing the respective vowels alongside of the consonant.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,132 issued to Hale, is directed to a method and apparatus for teaching musical notation to young children. Each note is associated with a distinctly identifiable color, which is in turn associated with an object that naturally occurs in this color. Each object, in turn, is associated with a cartoon character by color, the first letter of the name and the shape. Each character is endowed with a distinctly identifiable personality characteristic that enables the child to utilize the cartoon character in an educational activity. U.S. Pat. No. 682,015, issued to Adams is a simplified notation for musical tones employing a three line staff for a more compact arrangement and using conventional notes with strike through lines to indicate relative pitch on the abbreviated staff. This system uses conventional note types (full, half, quarter, etc.) to indicate relative timing of tones.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,090 issued to Lusi uses a composite musical staff of at least two sets of five equally spaced lines each, the two sets of lines forming a composite treble-bass clef staff. Conventional notation is used with this composite staff, designed to simplify orchestral scoring. U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,238 issued to Mencher is a simplified method of musical notation for keyboard instruments designed to enable easier sight-reading and playing of music. Each octave is represented by five lines, each of a different color, to match color tags of the corresponding five black keys of each octave of the keyboard. Each of the lines represents a half-tone and each space on either side of the lines represents a whole tone of an octave on a keyboard.
While other variations exist, the above-described designs for musical notation systems are typical of those encountered in the prior art. It is an objective of the present invention to provide for a system of musical notation that permits identification of each tone to be played through a single, easily identified character. It is a further objective to provide such identification without reference to positional location of the character, as with conventional musical notation. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide for identification of half-tones through unique, consistent characters. It is yet a further objective to identify the timing and duration of tones through a positioning grid, illustrating the relative relationship of tones to each other without using different symbols (half notes, eight notes, etc.) for the same tone. It is still another objective to differentiate those tones played with the left hand from those played with the right hand through graphical features. Finally, it is an objective of the invention to provide a simplified means for displaying chords and permitting the musician to explore chord inversions.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.